Thursday, September 29, 2011

I watched, until now, Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" as, even though he presents in general a left-wing point to of view he does have, on occasion, conservatives presenting their side. He gives them a harder time, in my opinion, than he does leftists, but so does e.g. Bill O'Reilly when talking to conservatives. Fair enough, people should be able to defend their point of view in the face of hard questions.

Stewart is genuinely funny sometimes, and genuinely childish at other times. The latter reflecting what appears to be the average age of his studio audience, but he has a job to do, so you take the good with the bad. He can be totally fair and balanced, for example he has denigrated the administrations involvement with Solyandra
(whilst walking it back a bit in discussing it with Bill O'Reilly unfortunately).

What I have particularly admired has been his, as I have judged it, fair treatment of Sarah Palin. When other leftist sites have ranged from near insane, to snotty nosed dismissive, Stewart has been genuinely fair to her. In fact, when the media went PDS insane over the 24,000 emails that were released concerning her term as governor, he mocked them relentlessly for their ridiculous witch hunt.

However, sadly and strangely, just when it appears that Palin may not run and poses no threat to the Democrats, Stewart's show engaged in a distortion which one would expect from the likes of Daily Kos. Why would he do this? After all this time could he not resist a cheap shot at Palin? Perhaps he sees that if she does enter the race she might have a strong effect on it to the Dem's (or the GOP establishments choice) prospects? It is puzzling and sad to see someone whom I respected for intellectual honesty, descend to the level of PDS.

In this clip "Moment of Zen" which Stewart uses as a funny ha ha piece to close his show, he has Palin appear a hypocrite by, in one shot denigrating polls "They are for strippers and skiers" and in the next clip appearing to laud her poll result where she came in the top three.

If that were the truth of the matter Stewart would have just cause to make the presentation. However. if the entire interview with Palin is viewed uncut, as it is in the Greta van Susteren interview below, it is clearly seen that he took her comments entirely out of context.

From 6:38 on in the interview the truth of the matter is clear. Greta is discussing Herman Cain's excellent poll result in Florida, and suggests it was a surprise to the media. Palin responds by saying it is "humorous the way the media covers these candidates as flavor of the month" and builds them up only to tear them down. She then uses as an example of media distortion-that the media uses polls in that quest, showing that one television station showed her way down in the polls, but ignoring another which had her way up in the polls. Stewart took the end bit of that and contrasted it, disingenuously I think, with the speech in Iowa where she decried polls in general.

If someone of Stewart's previous stature and character can resort to such distortion so early in the piece, it is frightening to contemplate to what levels the Obama support team, in the overtly leftist media, will go to in attacking Palin if she does run. The right must maintain total vigilance and answer these attacks with the truth, over and over till they, the progressive left and their enablers in the MSM are shamed and cowed.